The cognitive dissonance is palpable among Tory supporters today. Having spent the last eight weeks spouting the economically illiterate mantra that there is no #magicmoneytree, they have discovered that when it comes to buying the votes of the political wing of the Old Testament there really is a magic money …
Read More »Monthly Archives: June 2017
Never let a good crisis go to waste
As the full horror of the Grenfell fire became apparent, millions of ordinary Britons experienced shock, sorrow and an outpouring of sympathy. Many people in the immediate area rushed to volunteer – opening up community facilities and distributing food and clothing. Others reached for their wallets to donate the cash …
Read More »Science ‘v’ Economics criticisms work both ways
These days it is almost a given that economics is not grounded in reality. As the old joke has it: Q: What do you call an economist who makes a prediction? A: Wrong. The failure of thousands of extremely well-paid economists to see the 2008 crash coming did irrevocable harm …
Read More »Unprofitable fracking just became the only means of keeping Britain’s lights on
Britain just lost three quarters of its natural gas storage capacity, leaving it dependent upon gas imports from as far afield as Qatar and Russia. Centrica, the owner of the Rough storage site in the North Sea off the coast of Yorkshire has applied for permission to close the facility …
Read More »Is Britain on the edge of disaster?
On a cold Sunday in December a subcontract electrician makes some final changes to a railway signalling circuit. The electrician is at the end of his thirteenth consecutive week of seven day working. He is not entirely sure that the work he has done is correct. But any problems will …
Read More »The second Grenfell disaster has already begun
If official estimates of fatalities are correct, then the Grenfell fire will be Britain’s fourth worst (non-terror related) disaster in modern times. If estimates made by residents themselves prove to be correct, it may even be the worst – overtaking the Hillsborough, Piper Alpha and Herald of Free Enterprise disasters. …
Read More »Not the Brexit election Mrs May expected
The British general election on 8 June was meant to be The Brexit Election that would provide incumbent Prime Minister Theresa May with the strong and stable majority with which to go into battle against the EU 27. It didn’t turn out that way though. A strong Labour campaign worked …
Read More »Cuadrilla responds to financial pressures
Just months Cuadrilla’s CEO Francis Egan raised questions about the profitability of UK fracking; he has taken an axe to the company’s finances. According to Jillian Ambrose in the Telegraph: “Cuadrilla has cut deep into its spending and reduced its workforce by a fifth to stem its mounting losses… “The …
Read More »Please stop chanting greenwash
Chanting is a practice found in most religious and spiritual practices. In yoga, for example, the sound OM is chanted repetitively until it loses any cognitive meaning and simply becomes pure sound vibration. Recently I have begun to wonder if repeating that this or that country just generated all of …
Read More »Britain’s coming food crisis
It is no accident that we remember Marie Antoinette for supposedly saying “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (let them eat cake).” Whether she actually said it is irrelevant. The fact is that the French Revolution evolved out of food shortages that forced the desperate poor to take to the streets …
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